Sunday, April 25, 2010

I was never a big chinese food person when I ate meat, although, I really enjoyed eating shrimp fried rice. This was one of my favorite dishes until I became a vegan. Besides the meat in this dish, the white rice is not good for health because the nutrients have been stripped away through process system.
Rice goes through a variety of processes before it is put on your local grocery stores shelf. After harvesting, the seeds are run through a rice huller/husker for milling to remove the outer grain husks. After this process, you're left with brown rice.
To create white rice, there's added steps. The germ and the inner husk (bran) is removed, the grain is then polished, usually using glucose or talc.

The crazy thing is that these added steps to turn brown rice to white remove nutrients that are sometimes then introduced back in via synthetic sources.
The loss of nutrients is broad and substantial. Plain white rice has far less Vitamin E, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folacin, Potassium, Magnesium, Iron and over dozen other nutrients. Added to that, the dietary fiber contained in white rice is around a quarter of brown rice.

So, therefore, brown rice appears to be more healthy and its beneficial to the environment through less processing of a food, the less energy required. There's also the issue of the synthetic vitamins added back in - produced in laboratories and factories from a variety of chemicals; and these sorts of processes are well known for their negative impact on the environment.

If you're used to white rice, making the switch to brown can cause a taste bud rebellion. It's somewhat of an acquired taste for many people. I suggest adding extra sauces and fresh herbs to mask the "wilder" taste of brown rice for a while to allow your tastes to adjust. Once you've acquired a taste for brown rice, it's likely you'll never go back to white. You can almost feel the difference.

In a large skillet on low to med heat, add oil and sweat garlic for 1 minute. Then add tamari/shoyu sauce. Turn heat up to med high. Add onions, red peppers and carrots and stir-fry for 5 minutes until onions become translucent. Continue to stir and add agave, mushrooms and broccoli. Continue to stir until broccoli becomes a dark green color. Then add brown rice and green onions. Continue to stir-fry until all ingredients come together. Add sea salt and pepper to taste. Serve.